Book Review: Hostage to the Devil!

One of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. According to the author, Say-tan (one of this book’s many gems is learning the correct way to say the Devil’s name in case you’re ever at a Black Mass) has been a busy boy. Among other things, the author believes that the Satanic Ritual Panic of the early 80’s really happened; one of the many signs that far from writing a serious religious treatise, he has penned a crackpot New Age book. There is quite a bit of material about the Satanic Scare of the 80’s written by psychologists and law enforcement agents. The author either didn’t bother doing his research or just chose to ignore it. This is not surprising. I get the impression that he will pretty much believe anything, as long as it’s couched in religious jargon.

Most of this book is spent railing against the fact that the Earth has entered the 21st century. Goddamn kids these days are such easy prey for Say-tan. The stories of the exorcisms are pretty much pure fantasy. I’m not belittling what these people (if they even exist) went through, because mental illness isn’t a funny thing. I seriously doubt they were possessed by anything, although the author himself harbors no such doubts.

Mr. Martin would have been a great horror writer; and I mean that as a compliment, not an insult. He pulls off the neat trick of linking the exorcists with the possessed; in these ‘case studies,’ the victims aren’t even important. They are set pieces to test the exorcists’ faith. For example: one of the exorcists blasphemously believes in evolution. The demon uses this crack in his holy armor to hammer at his faith. Luckily, the exorcist discards this belief for something more suitably Middle Ages, and all is well again!

My only quibble with this book is that the author’s prose sometimes flies off into flights of crapulastic verbal ecstasy, making one worry that he himself has been possessed by a bloviating devil.